


The Shadow Beneath the Candle

by sharkduck



Category: Grishaverse - Fandom, The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: @Leigh Bardugo please dont sue me for artistic license, Canon Compliant, Emotional Roller Coaster, Gen, Gratuitous use of candle and fire metaphors, Implied/Referenced Suicide, People calling the Darkling Sasha, Pre-Canon, The Darkling has Emotions, The Darkling not liking to be called Sasha, The Darkling's past is pretty open to interpretation so i mean. this could have happened. humor me, The slow collapse of anything and everything Aleksander Morozova holds dear, but not canon, codependent friendships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkduck/pseuds/sharkduck
Summary: Before he was the Darkling, before the civil war, and before Alina, Aleksander was just a scared, brilliant boy with a terrible talent. And then, like a light in the dark, he met another scared, brilliant, talented boy with a hunger for knowledge and all that could be gleaned from it. But candles never burn forever.(AKA the self-indulgent fic about ~*~friendship and emotions~*~ because i love the Darkling and like to see him s u f f e r)





	1. The Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for mentions of blood (lots of it) and implied suicide.

Aleksander disliked thinking about the days when he was a helpless, stupid boy, traveling the mountains and seas with his mother, always running, always finding some place to hide. Scurrying like rats, when they should have been living like gods among men. But when he gazed down at the red pooling between the cracks of the impeccable marble tile, too sterile, suddenly he was a boy again, trapped in a dark forest and far from home -- wherever home had been that month. _Mother_ , the thought echoed in his mind as if his skull were a lonely cavern, _home had always been with Mother, wherever she was. And now that home is gone, because of what you've done. Stupid boy, always with your eyes to the horizon. Too lost with your head in the clouds to see that you've wandered into the woods._

Almost mechanically, he bent to scoop up the tool used to do the job from the floor, his fingertips coming away slick with blood -- it was nothing special. A boot knife commonly carried by city folk who were wise enough to not get mugged, but cautious enough to not seem conspicuous. They were standard issue in his burgeoning Second Army, a self-defense weapon made necessary by the Grishas' precarious positions in the world, and no one would spare a glance at it if it were found beside the body of a uniformed soldier, his blue _kefta_ floating listlessly and stained in patches by the diluted gore in the tub.

Except, when Aleksander turned the knife over, he found a small golden sun stamped into the butt of the handle, a sliver of color against black leather -- a tiny gilded eclipse, the symbol he'd taken for himself. Aleksander had given him this knife when they were still young hopefuls, not naive to the way the world worked, but too optimistic for their own goods. They had been friends once. Maybe that was why he felt sick to his stomach.

Aleksander Morozova was not a creature who dwelt upon the things he did to secure the futures of himself and the future generations of Grisha that would fight for him, but he hated himself in that moment for giving Aleksey this knife.

He hated himself even more when he slipped the knife into his sleeve and turned on his heel.

"Put the body on a pyre and have this mess cleaned up before three bells," he despised how callous his voice sounded, referring to what was once his best and only friend as a _mess_ , a blotch to be cleaned, but it was all he could do to keep from breaking, "I don't want the others to see this and panic."

The weight of the knife felt like it was burning a hole into his skin.


	2. The Spark to the Bonfire

Aleksander's life up until this point had been peppered with misfortunes, but nothing so bad as to be unthinkable. But now he was alone -- well and truly alone, not simply straying idly away from the comforting, watchful presence of his mother -- with the sun setting fast as he fled further into the dense copse of birch trees at the edge of the camp, further away from--

Time seemed to slow as his feet skidded to a halt, kicking up snow and debris as he stopped.

His mother.

He had left her in the skirmish.

It wasn't so much that he was frightened for her -- _Madraya_ could take care of herself. But without her here, watching over him, making sure nothing like what happened back at the Grisha camp near the border happened again, the world felt empty. Cold. A nauseating wave of panic squeezed at his heart and forced it to rattle in his chest, carried by the nipping winter winds and the ever-looming birch trees that seemed to grow larger with each passing moment. Like they were trapping him. He felt like a caged animal.

_I have to get out of here_ , he thought first, and he moved to obey the panicked, child's voice in his head; but he stopped dead when another, calmer, voice from the back of his mind whispered, _no -- I have to wait for_ Madraya _. She'll find me. She always does._

He took slow, halting steps deeper into the birch trees, chest rising and falling in heaves as the two voices wrestled in his mind. Too loud. Everything was too loud. He needed to _think_.

The snap of a branch, a quiet swear to his left. He spun to face it, finding nothing but the empty, yawning mouth of the birches, beckoning him further into the belly of the forest. He sat still, too afraid to move away from who or whatever had decided to follow him into the woods.

There. A flash of light, the briefest spark. Like fire? _Mother_.

He furrowed his brows, crouching low and moving nearly silently through the snow, like the hunters on the southern range had taught him, his curiosity -- and, perhaps, the chance that his mother was there, waiting for him, lighting a fire to guide his way -- smothering whatever fear or sense he had.

Aleksander came upon the boy just as he was looking up from whatever piddly fire he'd been attempting to coax to life, and for a brief moment they stared at each other, the air deathly still between them. The boy made the first move. It wasn't a wise one.

Faster than Aleksander could take his next breath, the boy had gathered up a fist-full of snow and hurled it, with little success, in his direction -- a good attempt at a distraction, but one that bought him less time to run deeper into the forest than if he had simply tried to escape first and throw snow later. The long shadows from the dying sun were in Aleksander's favor -- he convinced them to move, to snake up the boy's legs and obscure his face. He didn't yell or cry out, only gasped as he turned to face whatever force had blinded him, still running. It was an unfortunate consequence of being unable to see that he ran headlong into a tree with a solid enough thunk that it made Aleksander wince. He felt so sorry for the poor boy that he dismissed the shadows away from his face with a flick of his fingers; he wasn't much of a threat now anyways, laying on his back on the ground, his hands covering the part of his forehead that smacked into the trunk of the tree first.

This way, at least, Aleksander could get a good look at him.

He was small, though he couldn't have been much younger than Aleksander himself -- scrawny, his face sallow, cheeks sunken, and covered in mud and forest debris. The mess of tangled curls that made for hair atop his head was limp and discolored by grime, though, Aleksander could see by the fading light, that it was a color that was virtually indistinguishable from the dirt that plagued it. There was something not quite Ravkan about his features -- his skin too dark, his face too heavy-set, and the pout in his upper lip too pronounced. Perhaps his mother was Suli, though the light smattering of freckles on his cheek suggested there was Fjerdan somewhere in his bloodline, perhaps further down.

The boy's eyes opened, and Aleksander thought that they were a very pleasing shade of blue-green, a bit like a stormy sea, before he skittered away and Aleksander, startled by the sudden movement, lurched back and crouched into a fighting stance. They stayed deathly still like that, the boy sitting on the ground, a sudden movement away from attempting to bolt again, and Aleksander stuck between running and fighting, muscles tense. It felt like hours, but it might have been only seconds -- it was hard to tell time when the sun was dipping below the horizon at a breakneck speed.

Finally, the boy spoke.

"You're," his voice was raspy, like he hadn't drank water in years, and his mouth fumbled in an effort to make words -- Aleksander saw that, beyond being yellowed, his teeth were crooked, and there was a large gap between his two front teeth, "Grisha?" Aleksander nodded, hesitantly. The boy was silent for a few seconds more.

"I ain't never seen another Grisha who could do that, whatever you just did."

"Another Grisha? So you're...?" The boy nodded.

"I'm Aleksey."

"I'm," he thought to use one of the false names his mother had given him; he had been Yuri for the past few weeks, but the name never sat right with something inside him, even more so than usual -- besides, how many Aleksanders existed in the world? He would never see this boy again, "Aleksander." The boy -- Aleksey -- nodded, and, cautiously and with all the grace of a chicken on one leg, held out his hand for a shake. Aleksander reached for it, stopped, then retracted his arm as if he'd been burned, shook his head, and tried to ignore the disappointed look on Aleksey's face.

"Ain't one for handshakes, huh?" he asked, slowly standing on wobbly knees to brush the dirt off the back of his pants, his hands coming away grimier than they were before. Aleksander only shook his head again -- it was better Aleksey didn't know. The last time he had shaken someone's hand had been a disaster.

(He didn't feel one ounce of guilt for what he'd done to Annika, even less for Lev, but his mind flashed briefly to her pretty white-blonde hair streaked with blood and soaked with water.)

He needed to change the subject.

"Sorry for blinding you," he paused, "and for making you run into a tree. And for scaring you." Aleksey only shrugged and plopped down beside his mound of twigs again, picking up two rocks and smacking them together in the hopes of building a fire, muttering quietly under his breath all the while. His fingers trembled, the cold night air causing his grip to be unsteady on the rocks. More swear words than Aleksander thought possible spewed, barely audible, out of Aleksey's mouth, the air whistling between the gap in his teeth.

"Saintsdamned motherfucking son of a _bitch_ , stupid _rocks_! If I could just--"

"It'd be easier if you were using actual flint." Aleksey stopped, his eyebrows shooting up and disappearing under his mop of brunette hair.

"Flint?" Oh dear.

"It's-- you can't just bang two rocks together and hope for a spark."

"I did it earlier." The flash in the woods, like a brief spark. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"That was luck. Just-- here," he pulled his flint stones from his trouser pocket, an extra precaution, in case he was lost in the woods and needed a fire. (He _was_ lost in the woods and needed a fire -- once again, his mother's endless wisdom had saved his hide, and he found himself regretting the way he rolled his eyes when she handed him the two small, chalky pieces of rock and told him to keep them close.)

He hardly spared a thought as he bent down to shed a spark onto the pile of tinder between them, and Aleksey's panicked " _wait!_ " came too late for him to stop.

The fire ignited in a searing hot mushroom-shaped cloud of combustible air, forcing the both of them to retreat quickly to the safety on the fringes of the flame, as if blown away like leaves by the heat, the fire roaring higher than should be possible for a few twigs. It caused the tips of the tree branches to char and wither.

Aleksander blinked. Aleksey blinked back. Slowly, Aleksander came to the realization that most of the downy hairs on his arms had been singed off. He was at a loss for words, and so he said the first thing that came to mind:

"You're Inferni then?"

"I got no idea what that means."

"Have you-- have you actually met another Grisha?"

"No."

"Oh." There was silence between them again.

"Got anything to eat?" Aleksander flinched, realizing that this boy probably hadn't eaten in days -- lost in the woods.

_Or left here to die_ , he thought. It wasn't an uncommon practice. Particularly for parents with unwanted children -- Grisha children. _I could change that. I could change everything._

He shook his head -- partially as a response to Aleksey's question, mostly to clear his head of those lingering thoughts. His mother was always telling him that he spent too much time gazing at the horizon and not enough time watching for the cliff; he was still mostly unsure as to what that meant, but here, alone in the woods except for a starving boy with stormy eyes and a gap in his teeth, he was starting to understand.

Aleksey's face was crestfallen, but not in the least bit surprised.

"It's alright," his voice was surprisingly gentle, as if Aleksander was the one that needed reassurance, "I'll find something in the morn." He didn't sound so sure.

"Where are your parents?" Aleksander asked, and he immediately regretted the words, but they left his mouth before he could think of something else to say; it was a dangerous habit. Aleksey rubbed his arm, staring up at the tips of their bonfire that seemed to float above the ground, held aloft by Inferni magic.

"Gone," and that was all he said. Aleksander paused, searching for words.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." That, at least, was familiar; he had heard his mother say the same thing more than once.

His mother. Where was she now? Searching for him? He certainly hoped so.

They sat like that until the sun went down, plunging the world into twilight, and then night, the stars winking into existence as the hours waned on. Occasionally he and Aleksey would make idle chit-chat -- where they came from (Aleksey, Aleksander discovered, was from a village to the west of here that was small enough to not deserve a name; Aleksander simply answered that he was from the south), why they were here, their powers. Aleksey's questions about the Grisha and the world outside his village and this forest were insatiable; Aleksander didn't know whether to be disturbed or amused at the glint of hunger in his eyes -- his world was so small, but Aleksander felt as though, given half a chance, he would burn down kingdoms for a scrap of knowledge that he didn't have yet. It kept their minds away from the angry rumbling of their stomachs.

Eventually, they ran out of topics to talk about; thankfully, by that time the exhaustion from running and starving had set in for them both.

Aleksey yawned and, without warning, flopped onto his side and remained still, seizing Aleksander's heart with panic. Quietly, uncertainly, he called Aleksey's name. He didn't want to be alone again.

"Hmn?" he answered, and Aleksander let loose a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't be."

"...Aren't you cold?"

"I got a fire."

"Isn't the ground cold? And wet?"

"No," but, eventually, Aleksey's pride wavered. "...A little bit."

Aleksander suppressed a smile as he undid his traveling cloak and laid it on the ground, smoothing out the wrinkles in the fur and rolling up the top to make a makeshift bedroll closer to the bonfire, where they could weather the chilly night air without waking up soaked and covered in mud in the morning. Aleksey rolled onto it with a grateful sigh.

"Thanks," he grinned, flashing his yellow, crooked, gap-toothed smile, before he turned onto his side, his back facing the fire, "Aleksander." Aleksander had to admit that it was nice hearing his own name from someone else's mouth, and not Yuri or Eryk or Arkady or Kirill.

When he laid down on the ground beside him, he felt a jolt of terror when their backs touched, but if Aleksey felt anything, he said nothing. He was relieved to find that his new friend had already slipped into sleep by the time his head hit the rolled up edge of his cloak. With the roaring heat of the fire and the comforting presence of another person against his back, it wasn't long before Aleksander did the same. 

He was awoken by two things: dawn breaking the sky, and the snapping of twigs near their camp.

Their fire, surprisingly, hadn't died since then, and Aleksander bolted upright at the thought that the witch hunters had found them because of that. His heart soared with joy when he saw a familiar outline between the birches.

" _Mama!_ " He barreled into her so quickly that he nearly knocked the both of them off balance, burying his face into her soft, silvery furs that were caked with ash and smelled like carnage. He wasn't sure how she had found him, but he was eternally grateful for whatever Saints had decided to bless him that morning. Her hands found their way into his hair, smoothing away the tangles that had made their nest there since last night, and she kissed the top of his head; he was never so happy to be lost in the woods.

For the briefest of moments, they stood between the birches, relieved to see each other alive and well again, until something stirred behind them and Aleksander realized that he had all but forgotten Aleksey was there. When he turned to introduce them, he was shocked to find Aleksey pressed against the trunk of a tree, eyes wide and searching for an escape route as his mother stared him down with cold, flat eyes. It was their first meeting repeating itself.

"Mama," he started, "this is Aleksey-- Aleksey, this is--"

"Your mama," Aleksander felt his cheeks flush; when he said it like that, it really did make him seem childish. His mother only nodded once, glancing from the top of Aleksey's matted hair to the bottom of his raggedy boots with holes in the leather, her expression unreadable.

What was she thinking? A woods rat, left in the forest to die? A lost orphan? A spy? A Suli thief? Aleksander tugged gently on her sleeve, trying desperately to thaw the situation.

"Aleksey is Inferni," he said, "Grisha, like us."

"Still ain't got no idea what that means." She was still quiet. It unnerved the both of them. When she finally spoke, her voice was even and cool, but her eyes flickered to the bonfire that was still raging -- if in the slow process of dying -- beside them.

"We should go," she said, and Aleksander's heart fell as she turned to leave. For a brief moment, he glanced over his shoulder at Aleksey, still pressed against the trunk of the tree, but rubbing his arm and staring at the shifting colors of the morning sky. It didn't take him long to come to a decision. He jogged to catch up to his mother, already making headway through the birches.

"Mama," he caught her sleeve, and she stopped, raising an eyebrow over her shoulder, "can we take him with us?"

The question carried weight -- more people was more conspicuous, and Aleksey was not easily passed off as his brother; it also meant more mouths to feed. They both glanced back at the scrawny, grimy boy who wafted his hands at the bonfire as if to shoo it away, dispersing the flames that had kept them warm and dry through all of the night and most of the evening in seconds.

"He's quite powerful," his mother said, but that was far from why Aleksander wanted to bring him along. Was it pity, or kinship? He still wasn't sure. Finally, his mother straightened her shoulders and adjusted her furs, something resolute in her eyes when she turned to look at him.

"You left your cloak behind -- go fetch it," she turned to walk away, "and make sure you two can keep up. I'd rather not lose you both in the woods."

Aleksander's grin could have lit up the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for comin' folks!! And remember: Kudos and comments fuel my godless soul!


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